A new study is raising hackles about pot-laced edibles. The statistics really aren’t as alarming as they seem

In this photo taken Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015, Ashley Green trims a marijuana flower at the Pioneer Production and Processing marijuana growing facility in Arlington, Wash. Washington’s second-in-the-nation legal marijuana market opened last summer to a dearth of weed, with some stores periodically closed because they didn’t have pot to sell and prices were through the roof. Six months later, the equation has flipped, bringing serious growing pains to the new industry. Prices are starting to come down in the state’s licensed pot shops, but due to a glut, growers are struggling to sell their marijuana. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Activity trackers train users to love lives that are all workThe anthropologist Marcel Mauss once said that the difference between magic and religion is that people actually believe in magic. But wearing a FitBit, it is easy to imagine what it feels like to believe in God. Clipped on my bra strap or tucked into a pocket, my FitBit watches over me. It converts even the most pointless errand into a pilgrimage. The final destination is more steps.

For nearly thirty years, a phantom haunted the woods of Central Maine. Unseen and unknown, he lived in secret, creeping into homes in the dead of night and surviving on what he could steal. To the spooked locals, he became a legend—or maybe a myth. They wondered how he could possibly be real. Until one day last year, the hermit came out of the forest

AUGUSTA, ME – OCTOBER 28: ADMISSION: Christ Knight is escorted into Kennebec County Superior Court on Monday in Augusta to enter pleas for multiple burglaries and thefts while living in the woods of Rome, ME, for 27 years. The North Pond Hermit agreed to plead guilty in exchange for receiving an alternative sentence with the Co-Occurring Disorders Court, a special, intensive supervision program where he will live and work in the community while reporting weekly to a judge. (PhotoAndy Molloy/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images)

Posted onJuly 31, 2015bypostroad|Comments Off on Origins of life: New model may explain emergence of self-replication on early Earth

When life on Earth began nearly 4 billion years ago, long before humans, dinosaurs or even the earliest single-celled forms of life roamed, it may have started as a hiccup rather than a roar: small, simple molecular building blocks known as “monomers” coming together into longer “polymer” chains and falling apart in the warm pools of primordial ooze over and over again.

Then, somewhere along the line, these growing polymer chains developed the ability to make copies of themselves.

Badwater Ultramarathon covers 135 miles, takes up to 48 hours to complete
(Newser) – Right now, as you sit in your air-conditioned living room or office goofing off online, there are 97 people pushing their bodies to the limit in what has been billed “the world’s toughest foot race.” The 135-mile slog known as the Badwater Ultramarathon kicked off yesterday in Death Valley’s Badwater Basin (North America’s lowest point of elevation), moves into altitudes as high as 8,300 feet, and ends tomorrow at Mount Whitney, the tallest summit in the contiguous US, per Mashable.

Posted onJuly 30, 2015bypostroad|Comments Off on Turkey’s Political Influence Felt as Washington Turns Its Back on Kurds Fighting ISIS

Kurdish militias have provided a rare bright spot in the battle against the Islamic State. But they’re being left high and dry as Turkey flexes its political muscle in Washington and applies its military might in the region.

How does it feel when the sauna-like certainties of your cherished beliefs are blasted by a brisk wind of doubt? Do you shiver and shrivel, or do you feel invigorated? Several years ago, Malcolm Gladwell started researching what social psychologists call the “just world” hypothesis. It’s the inclination to think that we deserve what we get, that we make our own luck. He was exploring particular ways in which the world—and our understanding of the world—might not be just. He would look at what we revered (the Ivy League!) and reviled (pit bulls!), and ask hard questions about why we classified and ranked things the way we did.